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Touching the relationship between Himself and the great patriarch of their race, Jesus thus affirmed and emphasized His own supremacy: “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.” Not only angered but puzzled, the Jews demanded further explanation. Construing the last declaration as applying to the mortal state only, they said: “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?” Jesus answered, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.” This was an unequivocal and unambiguous declaration of our Lord’s eternal Godship. By the awful title I AM He had made Himself known to Moses and thereafter was so known in Israel. As already shown, it is the equivalent of “Yahveh,” or “Jahveh,” now rendered “Jehovah,” and signifies “The Self-existent One,” “The Eternal,” “The First and the Last.” Jewish traditionalism forbade the utterance of the sacred Name; yet Jesus claimed it as His own. In an orgy of self-righteous indignation, the Jews seized upon the stones that lay in the unfinished courts, and would have crushed their Lord, but the hour of His death had not yet come, and unseen of them He passed through the crowd and departed from the temple. His seniority to Abraham plainly referred to the status of each in the antemortal or preexistent state; Jesus was as literally the Firstborn in the spirit-world, as He was the Only Begotten in the flesh. Christ is as truly the Elder Brother of Abraham and Adam as of the last-born child of earth.Share
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